Blizzard battles Hearthstone bug, as ranked play remains offline

Hearthstone's ranked play mode has now been offline for 24 hours while Blizzard battles a major bug.

Try to play a ranked match and you'll see this error message.

The error cropped up with the introduction of Hearthstone's March season of play, which revamps the game's ranked mode progression - or not, as the system did not work when publicly released.

With progression broken, Blizzard chose to switch off ranked play altogether.

"We are aware of an issue with Ranked Play progression for the March 2018 season roll," Blizzard community manager Keganbe wrote on the Battle.net forum yesterday morning. "While we investigate, we have temporarily disabled Ranked Play mode in regions where the March season has begun, which currently includes Asia, China, and Europe."

Now, 24 hours on, Blizzard is still working on a fix.

"We are continuing to work on the issues that arose with the Ranked Play season roll," Blizzard community manager Jesse Hill wrote in the latest follow-up post. "Please continue to monitor this thread for the latest information and updates. We will let players know as soon as we have a solution. Thank you for your patience."

March's ranked play changes are meant to shake up the game's progression ladder by setting you four ranks back from your current position every month, rather than the current system which sets you back a varying number of levels depending on which rank you ended up attaining.

It is designed to make things easier for top level players - they'll have fewer ranks to reclimb - but also help people who break through the level 20 wall and manage to inch higher.

Another change will see every rank now contain five stars to play through in order to progress - a change which feels like it will make lower ranks matter more as you push through them.

Finally, you'll now need five wins regardless of rank to unlock the current month's cardback design - instead of simply having climbed past level 20.